Talker's Redemption (5 page)

Jeremy spoke in… class today….

“Back off him and he will be!” Lyndie’s voice actually made Tate spaz again, and his head cracked audibly against the plexiglass this time, and he saw stars. That black, festering nausea was back and Talker started shaking with the need to throw up.

The cops looked up, looked at her, and for a minute there, he thought he could breathe.

“Ma’am, we’re just trying to find out what happened to your son.”

“My
nephew
was beaten by some thugs in a back alley—as awful as it is, it happens all the time. What he
wouldn’t
want is for Tate here to be bullied by a couple of cops who think they know every goddamned thing!”

Tate looked at Lyndie through a haze of dark vision. She was lying for him. All this woman had ever done was be nice to him, but she was lying for him, so he didn’t have to tell the truth. Jed had lied for him, Brian had fought for him, oh,
dammit,
couldn’t Tate Walker with the punk hair and the BAMF tattoo protect himself?

“Lady, he
looks
guilty!” the dark-haired guy said, and Tate whimpered.

“I’d die before I hurt Brian,” he whispered, and the two cops were all about him again.

“Yeah, so why the flop-sweat, ace?” It was the blond guy, but his voice was almost gentle.

“Don’t like cops, don’t like hospitals, don’t like seeing my boyfriend beaten up.” Some attitude crept in there, and Talker gave many thanks to an absent God. His vision cleared for a second, and he pushed off the wall with his hands. The stucco was smooth and cold against his palms, and it was not, was
not
the beveled wood of Trevor’s front door, and there wasn’t a lock or a sneer or a bobbing, veiny cock anywhere in sight.

Oh, Jesus, where had that thought come from?

Talker swallowed again and tried so very very hard to keep it all together.

Lyndie came up next to him and fumbled for his hand again. When he finally managed to grab hers in return, she muttered, “Oh Christ. Tate, your hands are like ice. You look really shocky—I think we should get a nurse.”

“I’m fine,” he lied. He’d never felt so trapped in his whole life, except for that one time when….

“So Trev
stands up, right? And he says I’m not going to leave, and I try to laugh it off. I tell him—” swallow “I tell him that I was worried about Brian, and I’m going to go home and make sure he’s all right.”

“Were you?” Dr. Sutherland asked, and Tate nodded, relieved to answer.

“Yeah.” Talker swallowed and looked at Brian, who was clenching his hand. Brian’s lips twitched up in reassurance, but Talker wanted to reassure him back.
Yeah, I was blind, but I saw something was wrong, baby. I didn’t just wander out with another guy and not think of you twice, I swear.
“Yeah, I was worried. You… even if you’re not sleeping together, you can’t just take someone like Brian for granted.”

“So, you
saw your boyfriend get beat up?” The dark-haired guy pounced, and Talker was backed up against the motherfucking wall.

“We walked outside, and they were all coming with chains and shit, and…” Oh Christ… oh motherfucking Christ, this was true, “and I froze, cause I’m not strong, and…” twitch “and I spaz out so fucking easily, and I just… just fucking froze. And Brian shoved me away and told me to go get Jed, and I did. I did and, we weren’t gone more than a minute, but it was… there were three of them, and Trev had a chain….”

The cops suddenly went so still, it was like the hospital turned into a museum.

“Who had a chain?”

Lyndie’s hand tightened on Talker’s, and suddenly he was back to the last time he was back against a wall.

“
Trev
grabbed my shoulders, you see. He threw me against the door, and I was reaching for the handle, and he grabbed my shoulders again and threw me so I was bent over the couch.”

“Did you say anything?”

Brian’s hands were cutting off the circulation in his fingers, and they weren’t tight enough. Dr. Sutherland’s voice was almost welcome, because it kept him focused, focused, ah, gods, it was so hard for Tate to keep focused.

“I said I wanted to go home,” he whispered. “I said I wanted to go home, that Brian was waiting for me, and Trev said I should just take it like the sweet little bitch I was. And then his hands were… I was wearing this bizarre belt, you know, with spikes and shit, and he had a hard time with it, and I kept trying to get away but… Jesus, Trev’s strong. He finally had to twist my arm around my back and pin it there with his chest so he could pull down my pants.”

“Did you say anything then?”

“I said ‘Please Trev, let me go. I want to go home to Brian.’”

“
Did
I say a name?” he asked, just to keep himself in the now. Dr. Sutherland’s voice, his own voice, the terrible moment he was recounting, it was all pulling at him, twisting his brain around into a knot, and he was having a hell of a time keeping it straight.

“You said ‘Trev’,” the blond cop with the wrinkles and lines around his eyes said. Tate was going to have to learn their names—hell, he might even have to look them in the eyes eventually—but right now, it was hair color and age, and he couldn’t make himself care about details. “Would that be the same Trevor Gaines who was beaten up at your bar about five months back? Because we dealt with that case, too, and Mr. Gaines refused to give us a name as well. But he did make a lot of threats about revenge. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Mr. Walker?”

“No.” Not until Jed had told him in the car, on the way over.

“Are you sure?” Blond cop again. He was the only one Tate would look at. “Because if this is a revenge beating, you need to know it’s not going to stop. Your boyfriend will get back at him, and Mr. Gaines will get back at Mr. Cooper—these things tend to go on until someone’s dead, and your boy isn’t looking too good.”

Tate moaned. “It wasn’t his fault,” he whispered. The blackness was all around him, swallowing him whole. He could see the cop’s face, and feel Lyndie’s hand, but there was a whole ocean of darkness between him and any human being who could pull him out.

“It wasn’t
your fault,” Brian said softly. He’d given up on just holding Tate’s hand. He’d moved his shoulders behind Tate and was holding Tate’s upper arms and talking softly, like he was willing Talker to calm down with his body alone.

“Sure it was,” Talker said bitterly. “I went into the house, I was planning to get laid. Totally my fault.”

“What happened next?” Dr. Sutherland prompted gently.

“What do you think happened next?” Talker snarled. “My pants were around my ankles, my ass was in the air, and Trev, fuck him, had the upper hand! There’s only one place this is going, Doc. Do you really need a visual?”

“What did you tell Mr. Gaines at this point?” Fuck him. Fuck him, fuck them both, and fuck this. Was this really fucking necessary? Did they really need to hear it? God-fucking-damn-them-all-to-hell!!!

Jeremy spoke in… spoke in….

“It wasn’t
Brian’s fault,” he said now, stronger, some resentment building in his voice.

“Was this some sort of jealousy thing?” the dark-haired guy asked, and Tate squinted and tried to focus.

“Who are you?” he asked, hoping he didn’t sound stoned. “What is your name?”

“I’m Detective Henries, why, you want my badge number?” Sneer. Scowl. Disdain.

Tate shook his head, letting the rest of it roll off his back, like Trev’s sweat that night. “I just want you to believe me that it wasn’t jealousy.”

Henries snorted. “Yeah? You people get pretty fucking jealous sometimes, you know?”

“Aww, Jesus, Henries!” the blond guy admonished, and Henries shrugged.

“You say what you want, but I’m telling you, this is a cat fight over this tattooed freak right here!” he snapped, and the idea that Brian and Trevor were actually fighting for him was so horribly, ghoulishly funny… almost as ghoulishly funny as asking your rapist for lube, right?

“I told
him to use lube,” Talker snapped, and his head felt swollen and explodeable. “And then I asked for a condom. Anything. Cause… cause Trev’s really big, right? We’d kissed before, and I felt him up against my leg, and all I could think about was, ‘Oh, Christ, some fucking lube, Trev?’ but he laughed and held my head down to the couch.”

“Oh God….” Brian’s voice was tortured next to him, and Tate turned to him, an unfair anger at his lover blurting out of his mouth.

“Oh God
what,
Brian? Cause I can tell you that if there was a God in that room I didn’t feel him!”

But Brian was solid, through and through. He didn’t flinch from Talker’s hard look, or let go of his hand. “Oh God, I can’t believe you ever thought you asked for this!” Brian gave back, his own face hard, his own anger on the surface. “How could you think you deserved to be….”

Talker shivered and shrugged. “I mean, really, Brian. I asked for a condom and lube… how bad could it have been?”

… class today. Jeremy spoke in… class today….

Henries
was looking at him like he was insane, and that was always bad. “What’s so fucking funny, freak!”

“You call him that again, I’m gonna fucking sue you, asshole!” Tate looked twice at Brian’s Aunt Lyndie. He didn’t think he’d ever heard the woman swear, much less rumble into a fight like a pit bull on meth.

“Lady, we’re just trying to get a straight answer from this kid! Because I’m telling you right now it looks like your nephew got beat up for a freaking cat fight, and quite frankly, that’s not worth our time!”

“If that’s all you see here, you don’t deserve to know the fucking truth!” Lyndie snarled, and Talker realized that the tiny woman had moved in front of him and was standing, teeth bared, between him and the world. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, because she was defending him, and the only person in the world he thought would ever defend him was Brian, and he didn’t deserve it, he so didn’t deserve it, but he hadn’t deserved what Trev had done either, and, oh Christ, isn’t that what this all came down to?

“Why don’t you let us be the judge of that?” It was the blond guy, the guy who was not Henries, and he was trying to calm the situation down. “Come on… I’m sorry. Jed called you Talker. What’s your name again?”